Tony Mowbray fancies Middlesbrough's chances of beating a Premier League team to a quarter-final place in the FA Cup after Boro edged in to the last 16 at the expense of Aldershot with a 2-1 victory at the Riverside.

With two minutes remaining, the Shots striker Danny Hylton scored his eighth Cup goal in four games seemingly to set up a lucrative replay for the League Two side after Lukas Jutkiewicz's late opener. But Jutkiewicz spared Boro a replay with a winner five minutes into stoppage time.

Mowbray would now gladly welcome top-flight opposition to Teesside and said: "In an ideal world it wouldn't be someone from our league. I'd like to play a Premier League side or one of the lower-league teams who've done well today.

"Either is suitable for us. A top team that we can frustrate or a lower league team we can give problems and try to get through to the next round."

Middlesbrough struggled to convert their chances against a resilient Aldershot side, who might have trailed 3-0 at the break but for the heroics of goalkeeper Jamie Young. And Mowbray has identified the midfielder Kieron Dyer, recently released by QPR, as the solution to Boro's lack of creativity. "I've had some conversations with Kieron," he said. "If he was fit and playing for us he would be a huge asset for our club.

"I've watched some footage of him playing against Gareth Bale for QPR and he did well.

"He's scored in the FA Cup against West Brom and he's been available, fit and playing. I'll have to see if something can be done and we might be close to that.

"If Kieron plays football for us and helps win football matches then I think he would be an asset."

Aldershot's manager, Dean Holdsworth, was left wondering what might have been after elation turned to disappointment inside 10 frantic minutes. When asked if the result was a cruel one, he said: "It certainly is because I felt we'd earned a replay. We've had a fantastic display of commitment from the players and we took our goal fantastically well.

"In the dying seconds we had it ripped away from us and that's a big blow for the players.

"This is a fantastic football club and there were some good players against us but we've held our own.

"[The players] will be very down in the dumps now because they deserve a lot more than what they got, but we go back to work on Monday morning. The challenge for the rest of the season is to show exactly what they have done, home and away, and push on in the division."